I love Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, a very funny comedy horror show that was purporting to be showing lost episodes of an eighties horror TV series about a haunted hospital, starring (fictional) master of horror Garth Merenghi (Matthew Holness), intercut with talking head segments from the cast and crew. Last year, seeing that there was to be a book released I was very happy, and was interested to see how the purposeful over the top terribleness of that show would translate into book form. I almost got a chance to see Garth Merenghi at my local theatre doing a reading from his book as part of a promotional tour, several reasons why I didn't end up going, not least that I got pretty bad Covid the week he was coming to Northampton. Garth Merenghi's TerrorTome is an anthology of three separate tales of terror that sticks very pleasingly to the formula of Merenghi believing he is writing the most terrifying masterpiece ever, when in actuality the book isn't scary or edgy at all (again, this is all part of the joke).
Each of the three stories follow on from each other, and all star horror author Nick Steen (an obvious stand-in for the author) and his battles with his own creations that have bled forth from his extensive literary works. Helping him is his long suffering editor, Roz, whose depiction is a reflection of Marenghi's deep set sexism. I enjoyed all three stories, but the first one was definitely the weakest. 'Type-Face (Dark Lord of the Prolix)' sees Nick coming under the ownership of a cursed typewriter that states it will allow Nick to unleash his darkest works yet. After a year long bizarre sado-masochistic relationship with the typewriter, Nick comes to understand it has no intention of helping him out. With a cenobite figure that had typeface keys instead of pins in its face, this was a rift on Hellraiser. I liked the author interjects that included referring to sections at the end of the novel where some of his more extreme ideas got relegated to. This first story took up around ninety five pages and neatly sets things up for the other two.
'Bride of Bone' was the second story and ramped up the comedy for me. The sheer arrogance and self-belief that Nick has in everything he does makes for some funny moments, especially with Marenghi hellbent on making him seem amazing, but by doing so inadvertently showing how pathetic he is. In this one, a serial killer named Nelson Strain has escaped from the pages of Nick's novels. This killer doctor is enacting a plan to have himself a 'bride of bone' through use of his expertise on avascular necrosis. With Roz kidnapped by the man, Nick teams up with fictional detective Capello in order to mount a rescue. I thought the actual author really got into the flow of things with this one. The meandering and too in-depth way Nick has of talking really reminded me a lot of the style from the TV show, with Marenghi going into far too much detail and exposition constantly.
After another hundred pages it was time for final story, 'The Dark Fractions', which was also my favourite. This was an obvious parody of Stephen King's fantastic novel The Dark Half, and took the idea of a horror author having an evil persona come to life to ridiculous levels. Here, Nick finds himself up against an army of evil personas, his idea having been that his evil persona who was hunting him, also had their own evil persona that was hunting them, who in turn had their own evil persona hunting them, making for a convoluted story. This concerns Nick, who is being hunted by his dark fractions. He knows if he destroys all the copies of the unreleased novel the beings are from they will be destroyed, but his pride about how good his novel is, has him really not willing to do that. I love all the parts about Roz saying how the book was far too confusing, and Nick's gradual acceptance throughout the ridiculous situations he finds himself in (such as being attacked by a small army of cardboard cutouts of himself, and being trapped in a strange mirror world.
I thought Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome was a fantastic book, it remains very funny without ever seeming like it is being that on purpose. The absurd characters and surreal moments give the feeling of a unified world. Each of the three stories felt different to each other, with their similarities often mixed into the meta talk of the author not having enough different ideas. The unshakeable self belief of Nick make for a protagonist who you can't help but enjoy following, despite being very very flawed. Some of the writing was just so darn funny. I will end with a little excerpt from a car chase in 'The Dark Fractions' which just shows so well the style of silly writing with regards to the high stakes the author is describing, ' If Nick happened to clip a passer-by, it would mean an instant fine, licence points and a possible jail sentence, depending on the severity of damage to the wounded party, but Nick no longer had a choice'.
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